Psst, are you in the market for an hour-long cable television drama about Washington politics and the media that covers it? A show with a liberal bent so strong it’s practically scoliosis? Maybe something with a beloved middle-aged star in the lead? Let’s also assume, for the purposes of this blog post, that you’re the type of viewer who prefers your TV somewhat larger than life, less real than surreal—and also that you are a fan of desk-pounding speeches, screwball banter, and strong parallels to current-day politics.

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The concept: What if you made a splashy soap opera starring Hillary Clinton? And what if Hillary had gotten a divorce after she lost the primary? Also, what if she had two sons, one of whom is a gay suicidal cokehead? In “Political Animals,” Sigourney Weaver is introduced as Elaine Barrish, a former First Lady and the wife of Bud Hammond, a once-beloved President whose legacy was soiled by a sex scandal. In the pilot, Elaine loses the Presidential primary to a young upstart, Paul Garcetti, played by Adrian Pasdar (he’s Obama, but he’s Italian: call him Cuobama). After her stirring concession speech, Elaine asks Bud for a divorce. Then she takes the job of Secretary of State for her opponent’s Administration, becoming the world’s heroine after years of harsh press.

That’s a pretty juicy idea for a TV series, even if it verges on offensive. (Hillary Clinton is a real person, after all, currently working as Secretary of State—has there ever been a show that went this far in setting up a parallel to an active politician?)

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There’s a special kind of catharsis in the wish fulfillment of “Political Animals,” in which we get to hear the ex-President admit, “It’s the hard shit I usually get right. It’s the simple shit I screw up.” There’s a perverse satisfaction to watching Elaine confront her compromise-prone boss, President Garcetti, who won the primary with his message of hope, by convincing the voters to choose him over a woman who ran a bad campaign, and who knows that she’s ill-suited to press the flesh, to schmooze, to lie. “Someday, sir,” she tells the President, her eyes flashing with frustration, her shoulders strong as any diva on “Dallas,” “it would be nice to be working for the man who beat me.”